The Big Bang Theory iTunes Shuffle
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Ten randomly chosen songs, ten vignettes. Canon pairings.


The Big Bang Theory iTunes Shuffle

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _The Big Bang Theory_

Copyright: CBS

(Author's Note: All translations of song lyrics from foreign languages are mine, but the songs themselves are not.)

/

1\. "Il tuo nome in maiuscolo" ("Your name in uppercase") by Laura Pausini

 _"This love you do not feel/and I never wanted/still exists inside of us./I will write your name in uppercase ... "_

Amy is not the kind of woman who doodles a man's name in her notebook. (At least she hasn't been since she was fourteen.) Even now that she actually has a name to write, she knows the owner of it would find her silly. _"What logical purpose would that serve?"_ he'd ask, with that haughty tilt of his head, and they'd get into another long debate. She loves a long debate, but they do get exhausting.

So when she writes _Dr. Sheldon Lee Cooper, Dr. Amy Fowler-Cooper_ or _Sheldon + Amy_ in her shopping lists or day planner, she does it in code. What looks like random strings of symbols in red ink is an alphabet she invented herself when she was a teenager. No one else could decipher it even if they wanted to, and in her experience, no one does.

Until one day, when she comes home to their shared apartment and sees a message written on the whiteboard:

 _SHELDON + AMY = HISTORY IN THE MAKING (For God's sake, woman, finish your equations!)_

It's in her alphabet.

The spelling, naturally, is flawless.

/

2\. "Die Reklamation" ("The Refund") by Wir sind Helden

 _"It was a bargain, a liquidation sale, a special offer:/Trade your stupid old life for a new version./As soon as I tried it on at home, I knew/There's something wrong ... "_

"A pleasure doing business with you as always, my dear," says Dr. West. "Have a wonderful day."

Penny frees her hand from the old man's sweaty grasp and walks out of his office at what she hopes is a dignified pace. A plastic model of a set of teeth smirks at her from a shelf on her way out. She's just sold Dr. West a year's supply of toothpaste that makes teeth look whiter, but does very little to combat tooth decay so as to keep his patients coming back. Her boss will be proud.

Her black blazer feels stiff and tight across the shoulders, her feet ache in their high heels, and the back of her neck is cold without the accustomed warmth of her hair. But she can always return the blazer and the shoes, and even her hair will grow out eventually. It's her integrity she misses most.

 _Yeah, hi,_ she imagines telling some bored clerk at the sales counter of fate. _This new life I've got here, see, it looked good on the hanger, but it's kind of tight, and it splits at the seams every time I run. Can I get a refund?_

But as she sees her gleaming silver company car in the parking lot, remembers her mountain of credit card debt, and most of all, imagines the miserable fights she'd have with Leonard if she quit this job, she knows she won't be leaving anytime soon.

/

3\. "So She Dances" by Josh Groban

 _"So she dances/In and out of the crowd/Like a glance./This romance is/From afar, calling me/Silently ... "_

Raj cannot keep his eyes off Penny as she dances. The strobe lights in the club flicker across her like lightning; she's here, there and everywhere, ponytail bouncing, skirt swirling, bare skin flashing. Her laughter carries even over the techno music as she links arms with Amy and they spin around the floor. Amy is a plain woman, but Penny's beauty touches everyone around her, like a G2 Yellow Star (the astronomer's term for Earth's sun) warming every planet in its orbit. Both women shine tonight.

Raj remembers what it felt like to be drawn to Penny's gravity, remembers waking up with her in his arms. Most of all, he remembers the look of absolute dismay on her face as soon as she recognized him, and the way his throat froze up once again.

He stares into his Grasshopper, wondering how many of these he'd have to drink before he could tell her all his regrets.

"Raj, c'mon!" Penny grabs his hands and pulls him out of his seat. "Don't just sit there. It's Girls' Night, time to have some fun!"

"Girls' Night! Sure!" Just one of the girls, that's him. Thankfully it's not easy to convey bitterness when you're shouting to be heard over a Lady Gaga song. "Clear the floor, ladies, 'cause this party's just getting started!"

/

4\. "Something Wild" by Andrew McMahon, ft. Lindsey Stirling

 _"If you're lost out where the lights are blinding,/Caught where all the stars are hiding,/That's when something wild calls you home."_

When Penny was a little girl and something upset her, she used to run out into the woods behind her parents' farm in Nebraska. Nothing soothed her like running through tall grass, gathering flowers to weave into crowns, climbing trees as high as she could and feeling the wind in her hair. She listened to _The Wind in the Willows_ on audiocassette (which would later make Leonard smile when he found out) and imagined lively conversations with the rabbits and squirrels. Even breaking her leg once in an attempt to test out a rope swing didn't change her mind.

As she got older, she started spending less and less time in the woods. Her friends preferred to drink, dance and make out in each other's basements, and besides the fact that she did (and does) enjoy these things, she didn't want to feel left out. As for Kurt, if she'd ever tried to describe to him how sitting in a tree made her feel, he'd have called her crazy.

Eventually she moved to Pasadena, where cars drive past her apartment all night long and the only wild animals were roaches, rats and pigeons. She made friends with a group of people whose only idea of spending time outdoors is running a simulation in their VR goggles. It took an almost military-grade campaign just to get Leonard to go to the beach, and even when he was there, he huddled under an umbrella with his e-reader and several layers of sunscreen.

But in her dreams, the woods still wait for her. She knows that someday, something wild will call her home.

/

5\. "Rewrite the Stars" by Zac Efron and Zendaya

 _" ... We're able to be/Just you and me/Within these walls./But when we go outside,/You're gonna wake up and see/That it was hopeless after all ... "_

Raj and Isabella are on their third telescope room date when she asks if she can meet his friends. He hesitates for several seconds too long; even as it happens, he knows he's making a serious mistake.

"You're still ashamed of me, aren't you?" she says, her brown eyes darkening.

"No, no, no, of course not!" he hurries to say. "It's my friends I'm nervous about, to be honest," he blurts out. "Especially Sheldon. When he finds out I'm dating a janitor ... see, he's not a bad guy, but he can be kind of a bigot."

"I'm a grown woman, I can handle it. Unless _you_ can't?"

He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. All he can think about is every comment Sheldon's ever made about the Caltech cleaning staff, every time Penny felt inferior surrounded by PhD's, and every terrible joke Howard's ever cracked about Cuba or older women. And that's without even counting the way his parents would react.

"Ay, Rajesh … " Isabella closes her Styrofoam takeout container and shakes her head. Her smoky, accented voice is weighed down with a quiet disappointment that hurts worse than a shout. "Maybe it's best if we don't see each other anymore. I'll ask the boss to change my shift."

"Isabella, please don't go." He catches hold of her wrist as she stands up to leave. "You're right, it shouldn't matter what the rest of the world thinks. All that matters is how _we_ feel, right here in this room!"

"I wish I could believe you," she says, shaking him off.

Practical as always, she packs the leftover food onto her cleaning supply cart and pushes it out the door.

It's enough to make him believe, once again, that his beloved stars are aligned against him. But he knows better. His mind wanders to a Shakespeare play he saw while he was studying at Cambridge.

 _The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves._

/

6\. "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus

 _"It's not about how fast I get there./It's not about what's waiting on the other side ... /It's the climb."_

Sheldon stares at the equations on his whiteboard until his eyes blur, his head aches, and the numbers stop making sense. He darts past the board like the Road Runner from _Looney Tunes,_ hoping they'll look different in his peripheral vision. He drinks Red Bull until he passes out on the couch, only to be confronted the next morning by a reproachful Leonard who pulled a muscle carrying his tall roommate to bed.

String theory taunts him, like a beautiful woman forever out of reach. He has to prove it. He _has_ to.

It's not about the Nobel Prize, although that would be a definite bonus. It's about the lure of the impossible, the drive to achieve what no one's ever done before. He supposes this is how the first person to climb Mount Everest must have felt (although he still believes anyone who does something that dangerous must be insane).

But it's when Amy comes over, takes one look at the whiteboard and tells him in her brisk, sensible voice where he's made his mistake, that his mountaineering analogy really clicks. Even as he blusters out of habit about her interference, the sight of her eyes blazing with intellectual fire behind her glasses is as beautiful to him as the most perfect formula ever discovered.

Safety procedures clearly state that you should never climb mountains without a partner. Sheldon is inexpressibly happy to have found one in her.

/

7\. "Muessen nur wollen" ("We just have to want it") by Wir Sind Helden

 _"If anything's too tight, we can widen it with a sledgehammer./We can be happy and still run corporations."_

You cannot be married to an engineer for long without learning to appreciate the marvels of modern technology. Listening to Howard talk about space flight, miniature drones with HD cameras, smartphones with AI interfaces and other improbabilities, Bernadette never fails to be amazed at the power of human ingenuity. On the other hand … "Goddamnit, why isn't there an app to put screaming toddlers on pause?"

Penny and Amy watch in bewildered sympathy as Bernadette slams her empty wineglass down on Amy's kitchen counter.

"I mean, it's 2017!" she shrills. "Sky's the limit, right? I've got the kind of life generations before us would've only dreamed about. So why does it feel like I'm being pulled to pieces, and any day now the stuffing's gonna fly out of me like I'm poor old Tammy Jo?"

Her ventriloquist's dummy, which Halley and Mike ripped apart when they fought over it, made an unholy mess on the carpet. She barely stopped Mike from choking on the stuffing, and if Stuart hadn't arrived just in time to soothe everyone and put the kids to bed, Bernadette might never have made it to Girls' Night at all. And that was a relatively quiet evening.

"Let it out, sweetie." Penny, who is not a mother yet but also the finest caregiver Bernadette knows, slides the bottle over with a wry, sympathetic smile. It may not be a practical solution, but it definitely helps.

/

8\. "My Lagan Love" by Celtic Woman

 _"Where Lagan Stream sings lullaby/There blows a lily fair/The twilight gleam is in her eye/The night is on her hair ... "_

"Your last name is Sweeney? Are you Irish?"

"Sort of. My grandparents were."

"That's amazing!"

Emily hasn't known Raj for very long, so she is still surprised at the unlikely things that will set him off. Standing in the hallway of her apartment at the end of a peculiar but happy date, switching phones to share their contact information, only to see him light up in awe at her name of all things, she doesn't know whether to be flattered or annoyed.

"Ireland's such a magical country," he enthuses. "I've always wanted to go. Have you been there? Is it true the hills are greener than anywhere in the world? Because I'm having trouble picturing anything greener than your eyes … "

He gives her such a glowing look out of his own brown eyes that she bursts out laughing, even as she blushes all over.

"Raj, please - it's Ireland, not Narnia. It's no more magical than anywhere else. Is this how you felt when I said you remind me of that guy in _The Hundred-Foot Journey_?"

"Hey, I was flattered. Dev Patel's adorable in that movie, not to mention a brilliant chef _._ "

So is Raj, and she can't stay annoyed with him for long. "Sure and ye're no' half bad yerself, boyo," she says, patting him on the cheek, with a rusty imitation of her late Nana's accent.

"God, that's cute. Are you sure I can't stay for a cup of coffee?"

"Sorry, I've got work tomorrow. But don't forget to call me, spice expert."

"I won't, my wild Irish rose."

They give each other's phones back, and he pulls her in for a kiss as delicious as any of the Michelin-starred food in _The Hundred-Foot Journey._

Even when she closes the door, she can't stop smiling.

/

9\. "A cause" ("Because") by Celine Dion

 _"We fell in love because, because ... /But now, we must love despite."_

The first time Penny tells Leonard she loves him, it's during a fight. He's jealous of the men who were looking at her during their date, she's insulted, and before she knows it, they're yelling at each other in the hallway between their apartments and it just slips out:

"Would you relax? You know I love you, but you're driving me crazy!"

Leonard looks dumbfounded. He stares at her for much too long before answering. It's the saddest thing she's ever seen, him standing there in his baggy jacket fiddling with his keys, while it dawns on her that he really doesn't know.

What does he think she's dating him for, if she doesn't love him? Just for fun? Does he really think so little of himself? But of course he does, she realizes. He may be the smartest person she knows and the port in a storm all his friends depend on, but he's still Beverly Hofstadter's son. That woman has a lot to answer for.

"You've never told me that before," he says in a small voice.

God, no wonder he gets jealous. Every bit as jealous as Penny used to feel every time she heard him matter-of-factly discussing his future children with Leslie Winkle. Every bit as insecure as she gets every time she fails an acting audition. Every bit as resentful as she gets when someone points out how she dropped out of college. It's like looking in a damn mirror.

 _We like because, but we love despite._ Whose quote is that? She can't remember, but it's true.

She loves him despite, and it's about time he learned that.

/

10\. "Take Me To Church" by Hozier

 _"Offer me that deathless death/Oh good God, let me give you my life!"_

Raj has known since he was a teenager that fear and desire go hand in hand. By the time he graduated, the way he felt about women had developed into a full-blown disorder that could only be treated with alcohol.

Emily Sweeney is the longest-lasting partner he's ever had. It makes a strange kind of sense that she scares the daylights out of him.

"Makes you feel alive, doesn't it?" she purrs, her eyes gleaming in the moonlight as she settles on a blanket among two-hundred-year-old gravestones. "You're not scared, are you?"

"Of ghosts? No. Of you? A little bit."

He doesn't seriously think she's capable of murder, all her jokes aside. But she is capable of changing his life so it will never be the same again. She reminds him of the goddess Kali, who carries a sword in each hand (all six or eight or ten of them) with which to sever the soul from the body, to slice through trivialities and find the thing that matters.

"If you want to break up with me, just do it," she says. "Don't expect me to do it for you."

"Break up with you? I'm trying to tell you that I love you!"

He can't tell if the surge of heat shooting through his body is fear, passion, or some volatile blend of both, but he doesn't resist it. He throws his arms around her and lowers her down to the blanket, forgetting the ghosts that may or may not be watching, forgetting everything but her.

I


End file.
